Tuesday, September 19, 2006

In January I decided to try out one of those Freebie sites that claims to give away free iPods. I would normally not have trusted something like that, but it came personally endorsed by someone I respect. In the end I decided to sign up as a referral for that person to help them get one, and then worked to get five more referrals to get an iPod of my own. At the same time I started converting much of my CD collection to a digital format in hopes of soon having said iPod.

Many moons (and updates you mayhavereadabout) later, I was about to give up on the whole thing.FreePay, the company I signed up with, has apparently been having trouble in various ways, and most people in the Freebie community (I didn't even know there was such a thing until I started looking for more info on FreePay) were getting pretty down on the company. Posters to the Anything4Free Forums were talking about complaining to the Better Business Bureau, the FTC, and various things like that. I had to open a number of Customer Service requests to get any kind of answer out of FreePay, and I didn't think I would ever see a real response from them, let alone an iPod. I even started saving a little money here and there to put towards buying an iPod at some point in the future.

Then, just over a week ago, I got an email from FreePay explaining that they were under new management (link to FreePay's new blog) and were working to get the delivery process reworked and moving. They gave me an expected ship date of 9/23 and said I would be getting one of the newly released, updated 30GB iPods with the brighter screen, etc. My hopes began to rise, but I didn't let them go far.

Then, just this morning, I logged in to their site to see if there was anything new and I discovered that they have shipped my iPod! They gave me a tracking number and, sure enough, UPS says that package is bound for my town! At this point UPS only has the billing information and has not actually scanned the package into their system, so I don't have a delivery estimate. However, the fact that it is actually on the way is a relief and is getting my hopes up further.

My hope is that soon I will be able to post a photo of an actual, in person iPod and begin to do fun posts about what is playing on my iPod like Jay. Alas, I don't have any 80's metal to stump folks with. Maybe my first post will say something like:

See if you can guess what song Rollin is listening to today based on this hint: